QA: Pierce Brosnan drew from his experience as a widower in 'Love Is All You Need'

Irish actor Pierce Brosnan, who is also a global ambassador of whale conservation campaigns for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), walks from the West Wing of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, May 19, 2009, after attending a meeting. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak) (AP)

Pierce Brosnan stars in ‘Love Is All You Need,’ a romance set against a gorgeous Italian backdrop. The almost 60-year-old actor spoke to FOX411 about the movie and opened up about the similarities he shares with the character, a widowed father like himself. In 1991 after 11 years of marriage, Brosnan’s wife Cassandra Harris died of cancer leaving him to raise three children alone.

FOX411: Tell us how you got to work on this movie.

Pierce Brosnan: My agent called and said do you want to be in this movie, then it was called ‘The Bald headed Hairdresser,’ the title alone intrigued me. I read it and enjoyed it. I could relate to parts of my life, being a single parent, losing a wife, so I spoke to Susanne (Bier, the director) and we got along very well. I didn’t want to rock the boat, I was an Irishman in the middle of a Danish production, but she said, ‘Don’t worry we all speak English.’

FOX411: How did you handle being widowed and raised three children?

Brosnan: Grace under pressure, faith, Catholic faith, work and work and more work. It’s a devastating thing to befall anyone, to lose a partner, to be a single parent, it is the most overwhelming experience to be caring for children, to try to make ends meet, pay the rent, pay the mortgage, deal with the schools, teachers, homework. I had great support in family and friends.

FOX411: How did your faith help?

Brosnan: The Church has, I suppose, kept me good stead through life. I was brought up a Catholic in Ireland, I was brought up in the Church. Faith has kept me going. It’s just terribly disheartening that our faiths, to not the have the respect of each others humanity, and it is part of the wars down through the ages. It astounds me that the human race can be so negligent and so disrespectful of each others faiths.

FOX411: Did you offer any advice to Daniel Craig before he filmed his first Bond movie?

Brosnan: We sat and talked at the beginning of his journey as the mantle was passed on. He didn’t need any advice from me. I just said, ‘Revel in it, enjoy it, be bold and be great. Your destiny is your destiny and my destiny was mine.’ It’s a small group of men now who have played this role. I have nothing but gratitude for having played the role, it allowed me to have the career I’ve had and make my own films, but nothing really prepares you. It’s worldwide, as soon as you step into that role it sends you into the stratosphere, and if you get it right, as Daniel has gloriously done, then you have the world at your feet. It’s only for a certain amount of time so you have to enjoy it and celebrate it.

Brosnan: You had a tough childhood. Your parents separated when you were a toddler and you were partly raised by relatives.

FOX411: It looks tough on paper. The interior of it was actually... had it’s own serenity. It was fairly fractured. I grew up in the late 50’s in Southern Ireland. My mother, bless her heart, she left the shores and made a big decision. To be a single parent, to be divorced in those days ... they spoke to you and pointed at you from the pulpit. They shamed you in the Church and community and she wasn’t having any of that, so she made the decision to become a nurse (in London).

So I lived with my grandparents and with an aunt and an uncle in a lodging house which was glorious. I used to sleep upstairs with the lodgers. It was great. I was happy, so there was love within all of that. Eventually I went off to London to join my mother. Ireland is deeply part of my heart and soul. I was just there a few weeks ago. I took my mother back to my hometown. We went to the old homestead and wandered through the town.